Open Source

Python Bite Is Without Venom

Open source language Python among the safest tools with minimal defect density

Software application development testing company Coverity has produced another salvo of reports designed to garner press headlines alluding to its code scanning capabilities.

The most recent report found that Python has a markedly low "defect density" when compared to the industry average defect density for good quality software and types of defects identified.

NOTE: Python software has been in use and development for over two decades by organizations including CERN, Google, Mozilla, and YouTube.

The scanning service behind this report analysis is intended to help projects such as Python (and the open source community at large) to find and fix critical quality and security defects in production code.

Coverity gauges that since 2006, Python has achieved a defect density of .005 (or .005 defects per 1,000 lines of code) and has eliminated all high-risk defects in its codebase.

The Coverity Scan Project found an average defect density of .69 for open source software projects that happen to leverage the firm's own code scan service — this is compared to the accepted industry standard defect density for good quality software of 1.0.

"Python's defect density of .005 significantly surpasses this standard, and introduces a new level of quality for open source software. To date, the Coverity Scan service has analyzed nearly 400,000 lines of Python code and identified 996 new defects — 860 of which have been fixed by the Python community," said the company.

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